What is a method that can be used to increment letters?

Question

Does anyone know of a Javascript library (e.g. underscore, jQuery, MooTools, etc.) that offers a method of incrementing a letter?

I would like to be able to do somet

Answer 1

Based on @Nathan wall answer increment and decrement

// Albhabet auto increment and decrement
class StringIdGenerator {
    constructor(chars = '') {
      this._chars = chars;
    }

  next() {
    var u = this._chars.toUpperCase();
    if (this._same(u,'Z')){
        var txt = '';
        var i = u.length;
        while (i--) {
            txt += 'A';
        }
        this._chars = txt+'A';
        return (txt+'A');
    } else {
      var p = "";
      var q = "";
      if(u.length > 1){
          p = u.substring(0, u.length - 1);
          q = String.fromCharCode(p.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0));
      }
      var l = u.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0);
      var z = this._nextLetter(l);
      if(z==='A'){
        this._chars = p.slice(0,-1) + this._nextLetter(q.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0)) + z;
          return p.slice(0,-1) + this._nextLetter(q.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0)) + z;
      } else {
        this._chars = p+z;
          return p + z;
      }
    }
  }

  prev() {
    var u = this._chars.toUpperCase();
    console.log("u "+u)
    var l = u.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0);
    var z = this._nextLetter(l);
    var rl = u.slice(1)
    var y = (rl == "A") ? "Z" :this._prevLetter(rl.charCodeAt(0))
      var txt = '';
      var i = u.length;
      var j = this._chars
      var change = false
      while (i--) {
        if(change){
          if (u[u.length-1] == "A"){
            txt += this._prevLetter(u[i].charCodeAt(0))
          }else{
            txt += u[i]
          }
          
        }else{
          if (u[u.length-1] == "A"){
            txt += this._prevLetter(u[i].charCodeAt(0))
            change = true
          }else{
            change = true
            txt += this._prevLetter(u[i].charCodeAt(0))
          }
        }
      }
      if(u == "A" && txt == "Z"){
        this._chars = ''
      }else{
        this._chars = this._reverseString(txt);
      }
      console.log(this._chars)
      return (j);
  }
  _reverseString(str) {
      return str.split("").reverse().join("");
  }
  _nextLetter(l){
      if(l<90){
          return String.fromCharCode(l + 1);
      }
      else{
          return 'A';
      }
  }

  _prevLetter(l){
    if(l<=90){
      if(l == 65) l = 91
        return String.fromCharCode(l-1);
    }
    else{
        return 'A';
    }
  }
  _same(str,char){
      var i = str.length;
      while (i--) {
          if (str[i]!==char){
              return false;
          }
      }
      return true;
  }
    
}

Usage

const ids = new StringIdGenerator();

ids.next(); 
ids.prev();

Answer 2

function charLoop(from, to, callback) {
    var i = from.charCodeAt(0);
    var to = to.charCodeAt(0);
    for (; i <= to; i++) {
        callback(String.fromCharCode(i));
    }
}

var sequence = "";
charLoop("A", "Z", function (char) {
    sequence += char + " ";
});

sequence = sequence.trim();
sequence = sequence.split(" ");

var resseq = sequence;
var res = "";
var prevlet = "";
var nextlet = "";

for (b = 0; b < resseq.length; b++) {
    if (prevlet != "") {
        prevlet = resseq[b];
    }

    for (a = 0; a < sequence.length; a++) {
        for (j = 1; j < 100; j++) {
            if (prevlet == "") {
                prevlet = sequence[a];
                nextlet = sequence[a + 1];
                res += sequence[a] + sequence[a] + 0 + j + " ";
            }
            else {

                if (j < 10) {
                    res += prevlet + sequence[a] + 0 + j + " ";
                }
                else {
                    res += prevlet + sequence[a] + j + " ";
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

document.body.innerHTML = res;

Answer 3

Make a function with {a: 'b', b: 'c', etc} in a closure:-

let nextChar = (s => (
    "abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyza".split('')
    .reduce((a,b)=> (s[a]=b, b)), // make the lookup
c=> s[c] // the function returned
))({}); // parameter s, starts empty

usage:-

nextChar('a')

Adding uppercase and digits:-

let nextCh = (
    (alphabeta, s) => (
        [alphabeta, alphabeta.toUpperCase(), "01234567890"]
            .forEach(chars => chars.split('')
               .reduce((a,b) => (s[a]=b, b))), 
        c=> s[c] 
    )
)("abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyza", {});

p.s. In some versions of Javascript, you can use [...chars] instead of chars.split('')

Answer 4

Adding upon all these answers:

// first code on page
String.prototype.nextChar = function(i) {
    var n = i | 1;
    return String.fromCharCode(this.charCodeAt(0) + n);
}

String.prototype.prevChar = function(i) {
    var n = i | 1;
    return String.fromCharCode(this.charCodeAt(0) - n);
}

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/pitaj/3F5Qt/

Answer 5

A just for laughs solution

function nextLetter(str) {
  const Alphabet = [
    // lower case alphabet
    "a", "b", "c",
    "d", "e", "f",
    "g", "h", "i",
    "j", "k", "l",
    "m", "n", "o",
    "p", "q", "r",
    "s", "t", "u",
    "v", "w", "x",
    "y", "z",
    // upper case alphabet
    "A", "B", "C",
    "D", "E", "F",
    "G", "H", "I",
    "J", "K", "L",
    "M", "N", "O",
    "P", "Q", "R",
    "S", "T", "U",
    "V", "W", "X",
    "Y", "Z"
  ];

  const LetterArray = str.split("").map(letter => {
    if (Alphabet.includes(letter) === true) {
      return Alphabet[Alphabet.indexOf(letter) + 1];
    } else {
      return " ";
    }
  });

  const Assemble = () => LetterArray.join("").trim();
  return Assemble();
}


console.log(nextLetter("hello*3"));

Answer 6

Simple, direct solution

function nextChar(c) {
    return String.fromCharCode(c.charCodeAt(0) + 1);
}
nextChar('a');

As others have noted, the drawback is it may not handle cases like the letter 'z' as expected. But it depends on what you want out of it. The solution above will return '{' for the character after 'z', and this is the character after 'z' in ASCII, so it could be the result you're looking for depending on what your use case is.

---

Unique string generator

(Updated 2019/05/09)

Since this answer has received so much visibility I've decided to expand it a bit beyond the scope of the original question to potentially help people who are stumbling on this from Google.

I find that what I often want is something that will generate sequential, unique strings in a certain character set (such as only using letters), so I've updated this answer to include a class that will do that here:

class StringIdGenerator {
  constructor(chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ') {
    this._chars = chars;
    this._nextId = [0];
  }

  next() {
    const r = [];
    for (const char of this._nextId) {
      r.unshift(this._chars[char]);
    }
    this._increment();
    return r.join('');
  }

  _increment() {
    for (let i = 0; i < this._nextId.length; i++) {
      const val = ++this._nextId[i];
      if (val >= this._chars.length) {
        this._nextId[i] = 0;
      } else {
        return;
      }
    }
    this._nextId.push(0);
  }

  *[Symbol.iterator]() {
    while (true) {
      yield this.next();
    }
  }
}

Usage:

const ids = new StringIdGenerator();

ids.next(); // 'a'
ids.next(); // 'b'
ids.next(); // 'c'

// ...
ids.next(); // 'z'
ids.next(); // 'A'
ids.next(); // 'B'

// ...
ids.next(); // 'Z'
ids.next(); // 'aa'
ids.next(); // 'ab'
ids.next(); // 'ac'